Our house is on fire. Join the resistance: Do no harm/take no shit. My idiosyncratic and confluent bricolage of progressive politics, the collaborative commons, next generation cognitive neuroscience, American pragmatism, de/reconstruction, dynamic systems, embodied realism, postmetaphysics, psychodynamics, aesthetics. It ain't much but it's not nothing.

Monday, April 30, 2018

I hope he's right. The analysis below though claims that many Dims are not making impeachment a plank in their campaign for fear it will alienate voters, while the progressive base most certainly is. If Dump can throw this red meat out to his base as an incentive to vote for Repugs, progressives are right to also make it a key issue in their campaigns. Many of the progressive wins around the country in special elections are emphatically making it an issue. To hell with the middle of the road corporate Dims and their safe avoidance of impeachment. They have proven repeatedly that their strategy has and will continue to lose bigly.

Continuing this post, recall
Wilber's 4 definitions of spiritual in this document (63-4): the
highest development in any line; its own developmental line; meditative
or peak experiences; a general attitude that can revert to the first
three definitions.

More particularly, see Heron's definition as "a more convincing account of spirituality is that it is
about multi-line integral development explored by persons in relation.
This is because many basic developmental lines - e.g. those to do with
gender, psychosexuality, emotional and interpersonal skills,
communicative competence, morality, to name but a few - unfold through
engagement with other people. A person cannot develop these lines on
their own, but through mutual co-inquiry. The spirituality that is the
highest development of these lines can only be achieved through
relational forms of practice that unveil the spirituality implicit in
them."

Continuing the last post, the Dump administration is going in the completely opposite direction. This latest EPA policy is just one more in a long line of climate chaos denial dominated by a profit-first paradigm that couldn't give a shit about people of the environment. Wake the fuck up people and voted out this toxic Dump soon before it is literally too late.

"The Trump administration is withdrawing a decades-old air policy aimed
at reining in some of the largest sources of hazardous pollutants like
mercury and lead. [...] Environmentalists and congressional critics decried the change, saying
it is one of the EPA’s bedrock environmental regulations that keeps
polluters from trimming back to just below the major-source
classification cutoff to avoid requirements that could further lower
their emissions."

The science is confirmed. Now we just need to elect leaders and representatives that value science and are willing to enact policies based on it instead of greed and power. Their warning is here. Some excerpts:

"On the twenty-fifth anniversary of their [first] call, we look back at their
warning and evaluate the human response by exploring available
time-series data. Since 1992, with the exception of stabilizing the
stratospheric ozone layer, humanity has failed to make sufficient
progress in generally solving these foreseen environmental challenges,
and alarmingly, most of them are getting far worse (figure 1, file S1).
Especially troubling is the current trajectory of potentially
catastrophic climate change due to rising GHGs from burning fossil fuels
(Hansen et al. 2013), deforestation (Keenan et al. 2015), and agricultural production—particularly from farming ruminants for meat consumption (Ripple et al. 2014).
Moreover, we have unleashed a mass extinction event, the sixth in
roughly 540 million years, wherein many current life forms could be
annihilated or at least committed to extinction by the end of this
century."

From this article, which claims this new paradigm will replace neoliberal capitalism. Just putting Band-Aids on capitalism isn't good enough. Capitalism at its core has degenerated into rampant inequality, greed, environmental degradation, financial instability on the verge of collapse and the decimation of democracy with the rise of plutocracy. And liberal tweeks, while still accepting basic capitalistic premises, are just more of the aforementioned Band-Aids. "Conventional schools of economics, politics and power do not comprehend
the generative capacities of decentralized, self-organized networks.
They apply obsolete categories of institutional control and political
analysis." Hence it's time to reimagine economics anew, and the Commons paradigm is already emerging organically.

"The commons, briefly put, is about self-organized social systems for managing shared wealth. Far from a 'tragedy,' the
commons as a system for mutualizing responsibilities and benefits is
highly generative. It can be seen in the successful self-management of
forests, farmland, and water, and in open source software communities,
open-access scholarly journals, and 'cosmo-local' design and
manufacturing systems."

A majority says Trump lacks respect for democratic institutions.
Fewer than half of Americans (45%) say Donald Trump has a great deal or
fair amount of respect for the country’s democratic institutions and
traditions, while 54% say he has not too much respect or no respect.
These views are deeply split along partisan and ideological lines. Most
conservative Republicans (55%) say Trump has a “great deal” of respect
for democratic institutions; most liberal Democrats (60%) say he has no
respect “at all” for these traditions and institutions.

[My note: That 45% are affirmative reinforces that these folks are living in a fake reality devoid of obvious facts.]

Sunday, April 29, 2018

"The recently celebrated division into easy and hard problems of consciousness is unfortunate and misleading. Built on functionalist grounds, it carves up the subject matter by declaring that the most elusive parts need a fundamentally and intrinsically different solution. What we have, rather, are 'difficult' problems of conscious experience, but problems that are not difficult per se. Their difficulty is relative, among other things, to the kind of solution one is looking for and the tools used to accomplish the task. I argue that the study of conscious experience in our scientific and philosophical tradition is a very difficult problem because it has been addressed with inappropriate tools: with harmful long-lasting and inadequate dogmas that have dogged science for centuries. I describe five of these dogmas, which are:

(1) the existence of an objective reality independent of human understanding;
(2) the subordination of epistemology to ontology;
(3) the restricted view of the objectivist-subjectivist dichotomy;
(4) the exclusion of the body from the study of the mind; and
(5) the idea of explaining the mind in terms of the neurophysiological processes of individual brains.

"We won’t have a complete science of consciousness until we can align our manifest-image identifications of mental states by their contents with scientific-image identifications of the subpersonal information structures and events that are causally responsible for generating the details of the user-illusion we take ourselves to operate in."

He's right about that except that consciousness is a empirically verified, neuroscientific reality, as Dehaene's research attests.

All employees everywhere need to follow this example and join a union. It's your only recourse to having any bargaining power against greedy, inhuman employers. Not all employers are that way, but the larger the company, the more likely it is so. Just listen to the conditions under which these employees have been working.

Corporate Dims are still up to their old tricks. Included in the video is audio from Hoyer telling Tillemann to drop out because the Party has already chosen. Sound familiar? They hate democracy as much as Repugnantans. The only solution is to primary them and win.

On Tuesday, May 1 from 11:00 a.m.–12:30 p.m. ET, the Economic Policy Institute will host Robert Kuttner for a discussion of his new book, Can Democracy Survive Global Capitalism?

The postwar social contract throughout the West combined broad
prosperity with healthy economic growth and decent social supports. That
compact was unique in the history of capitalism, thanks to the
empowerment of labor and tight regulation of finance. Beginning in the
1970s, financial elites began dismantling this bargain.
Hyper-globalization was a key instrument. New definitions of trade made
it more difficult for states to regulate markets and to defend worker
wages; regulation was substantially privatized. None of this was
necessary economics.

As Robert Kuttner demonstrates, elites won the policy debates and
lost the people. With a few exceptions, center-left parties were
complicit in the neoliberal globalist consensus. So when the inevitable
backlash came, it was championed by an ultra-nationalist far right.
Political mobilization built the postwar social settlement, and it will
take politics to get it back. Can democracy survive global capitalism?
Yes, but it will take more democracy and less capitalism.

Joining the discussion will be E.J. Dionne Jr. of the Brookings Institution, William E. Spriggs of the AFL-CIO, and EPI President Thea Lee.

This event is free and open to the public. A light lunch will be served following the event.
This event will be livestreamed.

Continuing this post, in this article Stein uses the idea
of tiers and levels within tiers. There are several tiers that go up to
principled systems. He seems to equate the single principle tier with
what is referred to as the beginning of
second tier in kennilingus (see chart on 123) and notes that within this
(or any) tier a differentiation between its structure and content must
be made.

"The mere use of particular catch-phrases
or the espousal of particular views would no longer serve to signify
Second Tier. Instead we would look through this content towards the
underlying structure to see if Second Tier capabilities are in evidence.
It would allow us to understand the range of views that can be
manifested with the scope of certain structural parameters [...] i.e,
there is more than one way to be Second Tier and some forms are better
than others" (131).

He starts by appreciating Roseanne for her support over the years, but then questions her Dump support as misguided at best, especially given her previous promotion of socialism. Maher shows examples of ideas Roseanne has supported over the years and how Dump dumps all over those ideas. He proceeds to cite the facts on how Dump lied about everything. But as we well know, facts have nothing to do with Dump worship and Roseanne has been programmed into the cult like all the other Dumpsters so will not get any of this. Nice try Maher but it won't work.

Friday, April 27, 2018

I think this is an article by Chris Cowan* of Spiral Dynamics fame cautioning on the abuse of second tier labeling. Beware the tierants!

"Although
this is only an interesting hypothesis, 'Second Tier' has become a part
of the central dogma of some versions of the Spiral and a popular
phrase in the Integral movement long shepherded by Ken Wilber. [...]
This is a contagious and sticky meme because it’s an easy bipolar
explanation; and it is one which we don’t believe has much value despite
emphasizing it in the book, Spiral Dynamics."

"In
our view, over-attention to first tier/second tier differences often
injects more confusion than clarity into analysis since it leads to
broad over-generalizations, becoming both a monster and red herring.
[...] Be cautious because tierism is a very powerful and ego involving
meme at the core of many peoples’ identities, an article of faith which
must be defended at all costs. Indeed, 'Second Tier' has become a part
of the central dogma of some derivatives of the Spiral Dynamics
approach. [...] All of this to say that putting much emphasis on first
tier, second tier distinctions may be following a false —or at least
relatively unimportant—trail."

Continuing this post, the below is from Jack White's latest album Boarding House Reach. Like his earlier work, there's a lot of changes and transitions, even a different sounding song halfway through. Lyrics here.

Continuing the last post, in Chapter 11 of FBBB Dennett said the following on the manifest image when critics claim it is only an illusion:

"In
fact, it’s a version of what I have said about the manifest image of
each species: a user-illusion brilliantly designed by evolution to fit
the needs of its users. My version differs only in being willing and
eager to endorse these ontologies as ways of carving up reality, not
mere fictions but different versions of what actually exists: real
patterns."

So our manifest image interprets actually
existing reality to accommodate our needs. Of course it does. That such
interpretation cannot be an identical representation of the totality of
reality is a moot point. It also undermines Dennett's other statement
elsewhere* that the scientific image is an objective representation of
said reality..Which of course reminds
me of Lakoff et al's work on metaphor, except that they expose the
fallacy of an underlying reality that we could know as it is in itself
through so-called objective science.

* Chapter 14:
The manifest image is "helpful metaphorical renderings of the underlying
reality uncovered in the scientific image."

Lakoff and Johnson from this post quoting Philosophy in the Flesh (NY: Basic Books, 1999)

"Perhaps the oldest of philosophical problems is the problem of what is
real and how we can know it, if we can know it…. Aristotle concluded
that we could know because our minds could directly grasp the essences
of things in the world. This was ultimate metaphysical realism. There
was no split between ontology (what there is) and epistemology (what you
could know), because the mind was in direct touch with the world.

"With Descartes, philosophy opened a gap between the mind and the
world…. Ideas…became internal “representations” of external reality…but
somehow “corresponding” to it. This split metaphysics from epistemology.

"…embodied realism…is closer to…direct realism…than…representational
realism. [It] is, rather, a realism grounded in our capacity to function
successfully in our physical environments. It is therefore an
evolutionary realism. Evolution has provided us with adapted bodies and
brains that allow us to accommodate to, and even transform, our
surroundings.

"It gives up on being able to know things-in-themselves, but, through
embodiment, explains how we can have knowledge that, although it is not
absolute, is nonetheless sufficient to allow us to function and
flourish.

"The direct realism of the Greeks can thus be characterized as having three aspects:

No more gurus: the emergence of peer
production opens the way to a commons of spiritual knowledge from which all
humanity can draw.

Is it possible to peer produce spiritual
experience and insight, just as knowledge, software and code for computers are
peer produced by communities of self-organizing individuals? If so, does this
matter?

My answer is yes. Spirituality consists
of socially-constructed worldviews that may no longer be appropriate to the
time and space in which we live. In this context, newly emerging spiritual
viewpoints and practices can be seen as necessary ‘upgrades of consciousness’
that can help us deal with new social and cultural complexities. The
implications are profound.

Spirituality and religion always bear
the hallmark of the social structures in which they were born and become embedded.
Emerging religions often represent a partial transformation of these social
structures because they represent new forms of consciousness, but they can
never become hegemonic if they are not rooted in, and accepted by, the
mainstream social logic.

For example, it’s not difficult to see
that the Catholic Church and Buddhist Sangha have strong feudal elements in
their organisational structures and ideas; or that Protestant churches are
strongly linked to emerging capitalist and/or democratic forms; or that what
has been called “New
Age spirituality” is often geared towards a marketplace of commodified
spiritual experiences that are available for sale. There is little doubt that
the Catholic Church and the Buddhist Sangha would not have grown as they did had
they not accepted the Roman political order and slavery respectively.

Therefore, it’s logical to expect that
the emergence of peer production as a new model of value creation and
distribution should also lead to new forms of spiritual organization and
experience.

Peer production or ‘p2p’ is defined as
any process that allows for open input, participatory processing, and where the
output is universally available as a commons to all. This definition includes a
number of elements that might also apply to peer to peer spirituality.

Continuing this post, Democracy Now interviews Levi Tillemann, the progressive Dem who was pressured to not challenge the Corporate Dim in a Colorado race. The corporate Dims will never learn so repeal and replace them with progressives. And hopefully this expose will aid in that cause. The blurb:

"A new exposé by The Intercept confirms how powerful Democratic officials
have worked to crush competitive progressive candidates in primaries
around the country, choosing instead to back moderate, business-friendly
candidates. This comes after President Obama used his farewell address
to encourage Americans upset about the outcome of the 2016 election to
take action by running for office themselves. We speak with Levi
Tillemann, a Colorado man who heeded Obama’s call and found himself
disappointed by the process, after he was repeatedly pressured by
powerful Democrats not to run. In fact, he recorded a conversation in
which he was directly told to drop out of the Democratic primary for
Colorado’s sixth Congressional district by none other than the
second-ranking House Democrat, Representative Steny Hoyer of Maryland.
We go to Denver to speak with Levi Tillemann, a candidate in Colorado’s
Democratic primary for the 6th Congressional District, which includes
Denver. He is featured in the new exposé by Lee Fang, investigative
journalist at The Intercept, 'Secretly Taped Audio Reveals Democratic
Official Pressuring Progressive to Bow Out of Election.'"

Good jokes on the very serious issue of Dump's literal insanity. After discussing Cosby's verdict Colbert gets to the topic around 0:30. The Pox Fiends just sit there dazed and let him rant because they in large part created this monster.

"How consciousness (experience) arises from and relates to material brain processes (the “mind-body problem”) has been pondered by thinkers for centuries, and is regarded as among the deepest unsolved problems in science, with wide-ranging theoretical, clinical, and ethical implications. Until the last few decades, this was largely seen as a philosophical topic, but not widely accepted in mainstream neuroscience. Since the 1980s, however, novel methods and theoretical advances have yielded remarkable results, opening up the field for scientific and clinical progress. Since a seminal paper by Crick and Koch (1998) claimed that a science of consciousness should first search for its neural correlates (NCC), a variety of correlates have been suggested, including both content-specific NCCs, determining particular phenomenal components within an experience, and the full NCC, the neural substrates supporting entire conscious experiences. In this review, we present recent progress on theoretical, experimental, and clinical issues. Specifically, we (1) review methodological advances that are important for dissociating conscious experience from related enabling and executive functions, (2) suggest how critically reconsidering the role of the frontal cortex may further delineate NCCs, (3) advocate the need for general, objective, brain-based measures of the capacity for consciousness that are independent of sensory processing and executive functions, and (4) show how animal studies can reveal population and network phenomena of relevance for understanding mechanisms of consciousness."

"Neuroscience of Consciousness is an open access journal
which publishes papers on the biological basis of consciousness, with an
emphasis on empirical neuroscience studies in healthy populations and
clinical settings. The journal also publishes empirically and
neuroscientifically relevant psychological, methodological, theoretical,
and philosophical papers. As well as the primary phenomenon of
consciousness itself, relevant topics include interactions between
conscious and unconscious processes; selfhood; metacognition and
higher-order consciousness; intention, volition, and agency; individual
differences in consciousness; altered states of consciousness; disorders
of consciousness in psychiatry and neurology; and consciousness in
infants and non-human animals. The journal publishes research articles, review articles, brief
communications, opinions, and ‘spotlight’ commentaries. See instructions
to authors for more information on article types. Neuroscience of Consciousness is partnered with the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness (ASSC)."

(Note: intentional spelling in the title.) The Morning Joe panels discussed it. Seriously Congress and Cabinet, you need to invoke the 25th Amendment because your Presidunce is beyond doubt incapacitated and unfit for the office. How could you possibly argue otherwise?

In his address to Congress he attacked Dump's isolationism and nationalism, as well as his climate change denial and fossil fuel support. Dump though is too stupid to realize the criticism and instead thinks he was praised. Idiot.

"'We
had a hierarchy in my office in Congress,' Mick Mulvaney, the head of
the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau told the American Bankers
Association. 'If you’re a lobbyist who never gave us money, I didn’t
talk to you. If you’re a lobbyist who gave us money, I might talk to
you.'

"In this statement, Mulvaney tells us everything we need
to know about how Washington works, and why Wall Street, the drug
companies, the military-industrial complex and other wealthy special
interests make billions in campaign contributions. Government should be
about representing ordinary Americans, not just the rich and the
powerful. Now is the time to overturn Citizens United and move toward
public funding of elections."

One such candidate recorded his conversation with Steny Hoyer. Hoyer explained to Tilleman, said candidate, that the Party picks their candidate well in advance based on who they think can win, then they throw their full support, financial and otherwise, behind them. And once decided they thwart any progressive challenger. (Remember what they did to Sanders?) It's all admitted in this phone conversation.

Of particular note, this corrupt strategy not only lost the Presidential race but over 1000 seats in legislative bodies around the country. And they're still up to their dirty tricks because 1) they don't care about winning because 2) they don't give a shit about we the people.

The Toronto killer praised the Incel movement on Facebook before running over and killing people, mostly women. These are guys who are so repugnant that no woman would ever consider gracing them with any love. So how do they respond? By killing them. Yes, they are mentally ill. But they are terrorists too.

Wednesday, April 25, 2018

To Dump and his Dumpsters. It calls for "the Federal Government to maintain scientific content
on publicly accessible websites, to appoint qualified personnel to
positions requiring scientific expertise, to cease censorship and
intimidation of Government scientists, and to reverse the decision to
withdraw the United States from the Paris Accord."

Even if he as special counsel is fired and that particular investigation goes away. Maddow explains how Mueller is protecting what he's found so far. The latest is that the warrants issued on Manafort came from the Assistant US Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, with the advice of the FBI's International Corruption Squad. Maddow also lists the other ways Mueller has protected what he is uncovering, including the raid on Cohen's office coming from outside Mueller's purview.

Even if Mueller is fired he's protecting his investigations so that they will continue in the event he is fired and the special counsel investigation is eliminated. It's too late Dumpsters; the law is coming for you.

Continuing this post, someone at FB commented that QM applies only to the very small or large, where current science is still accurate for the in between.

That
we humans are limited to what we can perceive and think by our
biological brain is verified by current cognitive science. Dennett even
confirms this in his notion of how our interactive affordances with the
environment limit our ontology to what is
useful to us, while we do not register the rest. So in that sense we do
not register reality in toto, and that includes our scientific
instruments (which includes math), specifically designed by us to notice
and measure those affordances useful to us.

Yes,
the rest of reality is out there, but it's hubris to think we can
objectively know or measure it with our self-created science. Which, by
the way, truly is incredibly accurate and useful to our particular
ontology but limited by our human biology and epistemology.

So says this recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Contrary to popular belief, it's not so much their economic situation as it is fear of losing white dominance in our society. Hence Dump's incessant race whistles against those other colored folks as the cause of our white suffering. It cites other studies confirming the analysis.

Tuesday, April 24, 2018

Indeed we should according to this recent Scientific American article. One thing I learned from Dennett in his new book is that according to him the scientific image uncovers an objective, underlying reality, while the manifest image is corrupted by our personal ontology. Not so according to quantum mechanics, which operates on the premise that our scientific results themselves are tied to our perceptions and constructed categories, not "a purely objective world out there." There is a paradigm shift in science itself in accepting this understanding, given quantum anomalies described in the link. It's time to update your scientific (and manifest) image Professor Dennett.

I appreciate Stein's ITC '15 paper. Metrics and measurements impact
us all in every aspect of our lives, not just externally but in the very
way we think and behave. Hence we need better metrics to ensure better
lives, since modernistic late capitalism has come up not only lacking
but quite detrimental.

And of course Stein
recommends an integral-based measurement system that requires the new
sciences of chaos, complexity and emergence. The old paradigm of "heroic
modernity" is limited to linear, isolated, singular phenomenon taken
out of its context and environment. But dynamic systems require
"multitudinous measures across multiple time scales" (39). The
latter metrics can facilitate "the emergence of a post-capitalist
socio-sphere" (41) which goes beyond measuring worth in just monetary
terms but includes volunteer work, environmental stewardship, good
citizenship and social justice activism.

Since
measurement systems have such a deep impact in all aspects of our lives,
it must include those most affected in that process, i.e. they must
have democratic input in the very creation of such metrics. This
challenges the modernist conception of expertise as the only arbiter of
measurement. The experts are still needed for their part, but the rest
of us are needed to define the parameters of its use, as well as examine
the ethical and policy implications, or merely to provide feedback which
must recycle into the measurements.

See Torbert's article here. A
criticism I've had before on Torbert's work is that it focuses on just
changing the leadership of an organization. It still maintains the
earlier action logic that organizations need hierarchical leadership
that transforms the org from the top down based on the hero/leader
mythology. While he does list (in his charts) a transforming leadership
creates an organization of collaborative inquiry from a participatory
approach, it's still the bosses that do this when collaborative inquiry
redefines organizational interaction as peer to peer.

That
doesn't negate that some peers assume leadership roles in some
contexts, but it does challenge the same top leaders in charge all the
time on everything. He does in fact note that "committed collaborative
action in teams" is required. And that "transforming leaders lead toward
collective leadership." Yet it seems that CEOs and org Boards are still
the final arbiters of organizational policy and decision, when orgs run
on collaborative inquiry processes have proven that they can run
without such top heavy structures (e.g. here and here).

Turns out Dump has treated Cohen like everyone else: like garbage. And yet he expects them to be loyal? You're going down Spanky Dump. There's a special cell in hell (aka federal prison) reserved for you, fully equipped with Vaseline and a ball gag.

This article explores the topic. E.g., Nixon's progressive candidacy for NY Governor is forcing Cuomo to tack to the left. He's changed his tune on felons voting, destroyed a Dim caucus that gave power to the Repugs, and is selling himself as in line with Sanders. (A rep for Sanders said the latter is pure bullshit.) We're seeing unabashed progressives across the country challenging the moderate to conservative Dims and they are making headway, and in some cases winning those challenges. They are running on an agenda that polls show the majority of Americans want, like single-payer healthcare, abolishing immigration enforcement, marijuana legalization, tight financial regulation, $15 federal minimum wage, a federal job guarantee program, stronger collective bargaining rights and so on.

See the link for some specific candidates and the progress being made. Hell, if this keeps up I might have the change the name back to the Democratic Party.

Monday, April 23, 2018

He bought "discounted and foreclosed properties as investment tools through shell
companies, all the while receiving support from the Department of
Housing and Urban Development. [...] Those mortgage loans, which, according to the Guardian, were acquired
through HUD’s National Housing Act, offered investors protection against
loan defaults when purchasing rental properties." I.e., Hannity built a real estate fortune by accepting government welfare.

"Tesla Motors
claims to be the future of electric cars. But in many ways the company
and its ruthless union-busting boss Elon Musk resemble the auto
industry's grisly past, before the rise of modern labor rights. And now,
in a new investigation by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting and KQED News,
it's been revealed that Tesla has been ignoring century-old safety
norms adopted by the rest of the auto industry, not providing enough
training, and faking its safety numbers in order to avoid regulations
and cut costs.

"The reports are staggering. Tesla has, among
other things, not painted bright yellow hazard lines on its factory
floors (the industry standard) because Musk doesn't like the color
yellow; left workers injured on the job homeless due to insufficient
workers' compensation; and marked workers' injuries it should have
reported to regulators as 'minor first aid' incidents and personal
health problems in order to artificially deflate their safety numbers.
The company has since denounced the journalists and whistleblowers
behind this investigation as 'extremists.' Musk, needless to say, was
not so long ago a close ally of the Trump administration, which has
repeatedly threatened to crack down on journalism.

"Take the time
to listen to the voices of Tesla's workers -- and the reptilian excuses
of their bosses -- in this episode of the Reveal podcast."

In this article Hartmann lays out how slave patrols were the "well-regulated militia" in the south, which were used to round up runaway slaves. He cites Carl T. Bogus' work "The hidden history of the 2nd Amendment," as well as Hadden's book on slave patrols. Here's Bogus discussing the topic in 2013, where he concludes: "And, yes, I remain convinced of its thesis."

Drollinger is strongly anti-women, anti-gay and anti-Catholic, as well as finding social welfare programs demonic. He's written a book explicitly promoting a Christian government. Christian ISIS is here and now in our own Cabinet.

And proud to be identified with the socialist label. It's high time we socialists take back the word and reframe it to its true meaning. We have to win the meme war by taking back words appropriated by the Repugnantans, like freedom and patriot. Instead of running away from these words we need to do the opposite and re-own them with clear, adamant voices. And either run for office under its banner, or fully support those who do. Now is the time, as more and more people, especially the young, are coming to realize the reality and benefits of socialism. See the DSA site for some sample issues.

See this article. Hate speech against people has always been around. But since Dump at least some of that speech specifically names Dump as justification. "Immediately after the election, there was a surge in Trump-related
taunts. But all last year and into this year, the threats kept coming." Dump has given permission for hate speech to come out of the closet and be not only blatant but proud about it. See the link for several examples.

Sunday, April 22, 2018

Indeed she did, this candidate for New Mexico Governor. Not only Sanders and Warren voted against this bank deregulation but so did 102 other Dems including New Mexican Rep. Ben Ray Lujan. After the '08 crash Dodd-Frank required banks with assets over $50 billion to undergo financial stress tests. The Bill purports that it affects too many small, community banks so it raised the threshold to $250 billion. But there are few small banks that have that amount of assets, so in effect it is letting bigger banks off the hook from regulatory scrutiny.

Why did she do it? According to Sen. Joe Cervantes, also a candidate for NM Governor: "Unfortunately it’s no surprise Congresswoman Lujan Grisham chose
bankers over New Mexicans. She has accepted $2,140,024 from political
action committees and over $100,000 from lobbyists."

I asked Lujan Grisham if she would refuse PAC or corporate money and it's no surprise she has not answered. Progressives must demand that their candidates refuse corporate money because these otherwise good candidates are easily and inevitably corrupted like this case in point.

Great article highlighting many of the reason I dropped out of graduate school to get a good paying job helping people. Some excerpts with which I particularly resonate.

"Have you ever spent two years pouring
your heart and soul into a project that only three people will ever see?
In academia, we call that your 'dissertation.' [...] Nobody reads this stuff because most of the journals are behind paywalls
so expensive that only large libraries at academic institutions can
afford to access them."

"But I think the ultimate sin is that academic philosophy is filled with people — mostly men — who
spend a lot of time talking about things that are almost entirely
abstracted from the pragmatic realities of human existence. [...] How could I justify this exuberance of abstraction when there were so
many real-world problems that needed the minds of intelligent people?"

"I don’t need academic philosophy to do philosophy. Blogging over the
past ten years, I’ve reached a larger audience than I could have ever
hoped to find through the traditional academic journal system. And
that’s ultimately why I dropped out: it was holding me back."

Video below. You can also read the transcript here. The oligarchs and their Dim cronies must be purged from the Party. If it can't be accomplished, and I have my doubts, then progressives must organize a new People's Party. And no, you can reason or bargain with the corporate Dims, as their reasoning ability has been destroyed by greed, power and hubris. To think otherwise is to be suckered into their game of appeasement and manipulation.

Sanders talked about it here. E.g.: ""A moral economy is one that says, in the wealthiest country in the
history of the world, all of our people should be able to live with
dignity and security." He addresses issues that never make it on to corporate media, like a living wage, voting rights and giant dark money. Issues that are never addressed by religious Repugnantans, supposedly a moral constituency but only fakely so.

Saturday, April 21, 2018

In this paper Thompson replies to criticism of his book Mind in Life, starting with one of his mentors, Dennett. On the issue of consciousness section 4 is instructive. Thompson uses subjective reports and finds them accurate if they are limited to pure description without subjective interpretation. And this has nothing to do with their reports being attempts to describe what is going on in subpersonal brain routines, of which it is acknowledged that we do not, and cannot have, access (red herring).

Also Thompson studies those trained in 1st person investigation, like advanced mediators. Thus they can more accurately report their phenomenological experiences than can those not so trained. This in turn allows for more accurate neurological brain measurements of those subjective states to allow more accurate scientific descriptions of consciousness. See the link for more.

See it here. Nagel gives a good overview summary, and I quite agree with a lot that Dennett has to say. But then Nagel gets to the section on consciousness, and how Dennett continues to insist is is merely a useful user-illusion nonetheless. Dennett denounces the first-person perspective because not only can it not understand the true (scientific) nature of its workings but it makes up fictitious reasons for that nature.

This precludes that our 1st person perspective can explore our consciousness while simultaneously also exploring it's 3rd person scientific correlates and sharing with, and learning from, our 2nd person communications with others and culture at large to align our manifest image with the scientific image. This is exactly the sort of investigation going on in neuroscientic studies of consciousness, where 1st person reporting of a subject's experience is indispensable to that investigation while not taking it at face value. That reported experience might not be accurate in itself depending on the subject's manifest image, but as I said, that image can be educated by the scientific image to more accurately interpret that valid experience.

In Overtime Peterson was talking about how liberals treat Dump voters as stupid, and that doing so was counterproductive. So Alex Wagner asks him about the contradiction, in that Peterson earlier said that liberals have to quit being politically correct and afraid of offending people. Wagner points out that Peterson is doing what he claims liberals are doing and she's right.

Peterson does though make a good point that if we get rid of Dump what happens to his supporters? What happens is that progressives will enact policies to help those people, like higher wages with better benefits, job retraining and a host of other humane policies. Progressives can still think these people are ignorant, even stupid, while simultaneously wanting to help them to get a good education to quit being ignorant and stupid so that they can be well-paid, constructive and informed citizens.

In this New Rule Maher counsels Democrats to use marijuana as a wedge issue if they want to win. When even Repugnantan former Speaker of the House Boehner supports it you know the tide has turned. Weed is to liberals as guns are to conservatives; it's that much of an issue and needs to be treated as such. Especially since 1) no one is coming to take away your guns but 2) the Attorney General is coming to take away your pot. And as usual, the segment is LOL funny.

A proposed explanation
intended to address a complex problem by trying to account for all
possible contingencies but typically proving to be too broadly conceived
and therefore oversimplified to be of any practical use.

Origin: Greek, 1625 - 1635

English panchreston comes via Latin panchrēstos
“good for everything, universal.” In Latin, its usage is restricted to
medicine or derived metaphors, e.g., Pliny the Elder (a.d. 23-79) uses panchrēstos stomaticē,
a phrase of two Greek words with Greek inflections, meaning “universal
remedy for ailments of the mouth”; Cicero (106-43 b.c.), in one of his
forensic speeches, uses panchrēstō medicāmentō “universal cure” as a scornful periphrasis for “bribe.” The original Greek adjective (and noun) pánchrēstos has the same relatively restricted meaning, i.e., to describe widely useful tools or medications. Panchreston entered English in the 17th century.

Friday, April 20, 2018

For conspiring to disrupt the 2016 election. This should be good. There is no pardon for a civil lawsuit, and it will bring out facts in evidence that were withheld in the Repug House Committee. Recall the DNC settled a similar suit against Nixon's Watergate scandal for $750,000. Note Dump himself is not named in the suit, but the following are: Dump Jr., Kushner, Manafort, Papadopoulos, Stone and Gates.

"The complaint, filed in federal district court in Manhattan, alleges
that top Trump campaign officials conspired with the Russian government
and its military spy agency to hurt Democratic presidential nominee
Hillary Clinton and help Trump by hacking the computer networks of the
Democratic Party and disseminating stolen material found there."

Continuing this post, Dennett does indeed accept human consciousness as the most advanced
comprehension on earth. I think he’s more talking about some of the
illusions we create ‘about’ consciousness like privileged access. And of
course all the woo woo metaphysical stuff. I’m all for aligning (what
he calls) my manifest image with the scientific image.

Another point he makes in From Bacteria to Bach and Back is that there
is no special area of the brain for consciousness, that it just uses all
of the other, specialized modular areas in the same ways. The neuroscience research I’ve
been providing indeed shows cross-brain networks (like the global
neural network) that are used in conscious but not in non-conscious
operations. Same for some specific aspects of consciousness that
highlight certain other networks not used in that way elsewhere.

Cooper does a good job at proving that what Lewendowski, Dershowitz and Hannity said about Comey and Mueller are outright and provable lies. Cooper provides the facts, something to which Pox and its viewers are obviously immune.

"Self-awareness is a pivotal
component of conscious experience. It is correlated with a paralimbic
network of medial prefrontal/anterior cingulate and medial
parietal/posterior cingulate cortical 'hubs' and associated regions.

"Electromagnetic
and transmitter manipulation have demonstrated that the network is not
an epiphenomenon but instrumental in generation of self-awareness. Thus,
transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) targeting the hubs impedes
different aspects of self-awareness with a latency of 160 ms. The network is linked by ∼40 Hz oscillations and regulated by dopamine.

"The
oscillations are generated by rhythmic GABA-ergic inhibitory activity
in interneurons with an extraordinarily high metabolic rate. The hubs
are richly endowed with interneurons and therefore highly vulnerable to
disturbed energy supply. Consequently, deficient paralimbic activity and
self-awareness are characteristic features of many disorders with
impaired oxygen homeostasis. Such disorders may therefore be treated
unconventionally by targeting interneuron function."

"Trump's presidency is increasingly defined by a dangerous metaphor: 'The President is the Nation.' He truly believes it's the job of the
American people, and their government, to serve his interests.
He's got it backwards, and his mentality is more suited to a
dictatorship than a presidency. In our democracy, we have a government
of, by, and for the people. We pledge allegiance to our nation, not to
the personal and financial interests of the person in the White House.We cover this critical issue, and also discuss what the Cambridge
Analytica scandal says about conservative attempts to weaponize
cognitive science, in Episode 7 of FrameLab. Click here to listen."

Corporate Dims (yes, Dims instead of Dems) are at it again, sucking up to the ISPs in their attempt to thwart the California net neutrality Bill (SB 822). The Bill would not only reinstate the net neutrality rules taken away by Dump's FCC but institute further consumer protections. But corporate Dims and being bought off to water down the Bill with provisions right out of the ISP playbook. Senator Scott Wiener (CA 11th district) wrote the IPS-friendly propaganda that the originators of the Bill are strongly criticizing. Contact him and the members of Senate Committee on Energy, Utilities and Communications if you reside in their districts to keep the original Bill as is without the suggested ISP amendments. Members of that Committee:

Can be found here and below. The event starts out with the host saying they agree, so it's not a debate. They do not agree on consciousness. From reading Dennett's latest book he still maintains consciousness is a user illusion. Dehaene refutes this emphatically. But it appears they want to avoid a debate here so it's just each of them talking in turn about their work, then answering questions.

The blurb:

Panel Discussion on the Mind

Stanislas Dehaene, author of Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts, and Daniel Dennett, author of Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking, talked about their books on the workings of the human brain.“State of Mind: Consciousness and Thinking” was a panel at the 2014 Boston Book Festival, held October 25 in the sanctuary of Old South Church.

"There are several theorists who have already realized the need for functions in developing theories of consciousness. Dehaene and colleagues have put forth a global neuronal workspace model that claims consciousness is defined by the orientation of top-down attention, long-distance feedback loops that extend into parietofrontal networks, and conscious reportability. [...] There is still much work to be done in regards to how these functions and mechanisms interact. [...] The upshot of function-based theories is that they make claims about consciousness that can be tested and examined scientifically" (362).

See the report below. Dump called Goldberg last Friday, who previously represented Dump in his first divorce. Goldberg told Dump there is zero chance he can trust Cohen to back him should Cohen be charged with a crime. And Cohen will be charged and flip on Dump. The end of the Dump crime syndicate grows closer by the minute now.

It's more than just making money on private education. It's about dumbing down public education to create workers for low-paying jobs by deflating their expectations and depressing their ambitions. In that sense it is about making more money, but to do that the rich need workers that will never challenge them or the unjust system they've created. It also makes workers under such conditions easier to manipulate, to direct them to blame others for their situation, like Mexicans or lazy freeloaders, diverting attention from the real creators of their fate.

Nixon is an avowed progressive that is running against corporate Democrat Cuomo. Colbert holds her feet to the fire and makes her justify her candidacy, which she does quite well. It seems there is a groundswell of progressives challenging the corporate Dims in primaries, almost as if the Party revolution is not only happening but making headway.

See this report. Fisk is an experienced and celebrated war correspondent who went to the area in Syria purported to have had a chemical attack. He "found no evidence of a mass chemical attack,
but he's encountered multiple local eyewitnesses who experienced the
chaos of that night, but who say the gas attack never happened." So it seems this is yet another case of creating a false narrative for war.

See this story. The Russian mob ran their US operations out of El Caribe social club owned by Cohen's uncle, Morton Levine. Levine said all of his nephews and nieces had an ownership stake in the club, and Cohen gave up his stake after Dump was elected. More will come out about this from the raided Cohen documents.

"Fifty years ago, Ernst Mayr published a hugely influential paper on the nature of causation in biology, in which he distinguished between proximate and ultimate causes. Mayr equated proximate causation with immediate factors (for example, physiology) and ultimate causation with evolutionary explanations (for example, natural selection). He argued that proximate and ultimate causes addressed different questions and were not alternatives. Mayr’s account of causation remains widely accepted today, with both positive and negative ramifications. Several current debates in biology (for example, over evolution and development, niche construction, cooperation, and the evolution of language) are linked by a common axis of acceptance/rejection of Mayr’s model of causation. We argue that Mayr’s formulation has acted to stabilize the dominant evolutionary paradigm against change but may now hamper progress in the biological sciences."

Meaning he has a close relationship with Dump and steers him with Hannity's insane conspiracy theories. It's obvious, since Dump will Tweet shortly thereafter exactly what Hannity said during his show.

Tuesday, April 17, 2018

Article by The Symbiosis Research Collective, which sees "hierarchy as the central problem," which they define as "a system of obedience and command backed by the threat of force." Hierarchy arises from historical narratives like Hobbs claiming it's a dog eat dog world so we need authority to keep the peace. Another was a romantic story of blissful egalitarianism. Historically humans seemed to have alternated between these paradigms.

But it was with the emergence of the State that hierarchy gained complete dominance. Without an egalitarian counter weight we degenerated into the state of affairs we see today. It's all about dominance, power and control over people and the environment. "Hierarchy thus facilitates environmental destruction by allowing a small
group of elites to pursue their own wealth through exploiting both
lower human classes and the rest of nature without accountability or
consequences (at least not for them)."

Borowitz does it again, this time about Hannity being outed as Cohen's client.

NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report)—Millions
of Americans were stunned and incredulous on Monday after learning of a
possible incident of bias at Fox News Channel.

At a time when so
many American institutions have been under attack, the possibility that
Fox, one of the nation’s most respected news organizations, might be
susceptible to hidden agendas was too much for many to take.

In
interviews across the country, Fox viewers expressed disappointment,
confusion, and shock that a news network known for its exacting
standards had imperilled its hard-earned reputation for fairness.

“I’m
devastated by this,” Carol Foyler, a viewer from Scottsdale, Arizona,
said. “If we can’t trust Fox News, who can we trust?”

Tracy
Klugian, a viewer from Akron, Ohio, said that he had been “walking
around in a state of disbelief” since he learned of possible bias at the
network. “I’m trying to be strong, but it’s tough,” he said. “I know I
speak for a lot of people when I say that today was the day that America
lost its innocence.”

But some Fox viewers, like Harland
Dorrinson, of Topeka, Kansas, warned of a “rush to judgment” against
Fox, urging people to remember the network’s stellar record of
journalistic accomplishments.
“Whenever there was a national
emergency, whether it was Benghazi, Hillary’s e-mails, or Obama’s birth
certificate, Fox News was there,” he said. “One little mistake doesn’t
wash all that away.”

Continuing the last post, this video presents Dumpsters as a religious cult. Particularly white Evangelicals, especially since Dump makes a mockery of their religious values. Keep in mind that it's the whites in this demographic that voted for Dump, not those of color, hence a racist factor. Another factor is the prosperity gospel, which assumes wealth equals God's blessing. Dump also promised political power to this religious group, something they crave in order to enact God's kingdom on everyone else via law (aka white Christian ISIS). All this trumps their so-called morality, which has been totally abandoned, to participate in a dangerous cult that replaces Christ with Dump. Reminds me of the Nazi's and their purportedly pure Christianity.

Dump's fascistic hubris would be funny were it not so insane. One of his other attorneys is trying to block the feds from reviewing some of the material seized claiming attorney-client privilege. Further, they want to review that material and determine what the feds can even see. That's the funny part. Besides, attorney-client privilege is void given the crime-fraud exception.

"I don’t think he’s medically unfit to be president. I think he’s
morally unfit to be president. A person who sees moral equivalence in
Charlottesville, who talks about and treats women like they’re pieces of
meat, who lies constantly about matters big and small and insists the
American people believe it — that person’s not fit to be president of
the United States, on moral grounds. And that’s not a policy
statement. Again, I don’t care what your views are on guns or
immigration or taxes. There’s something more important than that that
should unite all of us, and that is our president must embody respect
and adhere to the values that are at the core of this country. The most
important being truth. This president is not able to do that. He is
morally unfit to be president."

Sunday, April 15, 2018

The raid on Cohen provided evidence that contrary to Cohen's denials, he was indeed in Prague late summer 2016 during the time that the Steele dossier said he was there meeting with Russians plotting for Dump and against Clinton. The evidence leaked so far does not confirm that Cohen met with Russian operatives, but it's coming. And so then is the end when we will dump Dump.

PS: Borowitz reports that the Russian prostitutes that peed on Dump have yet to be paid.

It's good that progressives are challenging the corporate Dimocraps across the nation. The latter need to be replaced with those who are sincere about helping the working class and the poor instead of just the rich. This race highlights the broader internecine struggle going on the Dim Party, one that must be won by the progressive if we want to take back Congress and eventually the Presidency in '20.

You're being far too kind Madame Secretary. Dump is a fascist just like his predecessors. You list all the qualities of a fascist, all which apply to Dump, yet refuse to take that obvious step. You do though warn that Dump could lead to Hitlerian fascism so we need to act now before it's too late.

"The narrative that will become widely understood is that Donald Trump
did not sit atop a global empire. He was not an intuitive genius and
tough guy who created billions of dollars of wealth through
fearlessness. He had a small, sad operation, mostly run by his two
oldest children and Michael Cohen, a lousy lawyer who barely keeps up
the pretenses of lawyering and who now faces an avalanche of charges, from taxicab-backed bank fraud to money laundering and campaign-finance violations."

Excellent, accurate historical reporting of when the US used this chemical weapon in Vietnam, and the consequences today: "650,000 [are...] suffering from an array of baffling chronic conditions. Another 500,000 have already died." Where's the American outrage about that, especially since it included innocent, civilian women and children? Some of the symptoms of those on death's door:

"Hong Hanh is both surprising and terrifying. Here is a 19-year-old who
lives in a 10-year-old's body. She clatters around with disjointed
spidery strides which leave her soaked in sweat. When she cannot stop
crying, soothing creams and iodine are rubbed into her back, which is a
lunar collage of septic blisters and scabs. "My daughter is dying," her
mother says. "My youngest daughter is 11 and she has the same symptoms.
What should we do? Their fingers and toes stick together before they
drop off. Their hands wear down to stumps. Every day they lose a little
more skin. And this is not leprosy. The doctors say it is connected to
American chemical weapons we were exposed to during the Vietnam war."